DAY, THOMAS (1748-1789), British author, was born in London, and is famous as the writer of Sandford and Merton (1783-89), a book for the young. Day was educated at the Charterhouse and at Corpus Christi college, Oxford, and became a great admirer of J. J. Rousseau and his doctrine of the ideal state of nature. Having independent means he devoted himself to a life of study and philanthropy. He brought up two foundlings, one of whom he hoped eventually to marry, on the severest prin ciples, but neither acquired the high quality of stoicism which he had looked for, and ultimately he married an heiress who agreed with his ascetic programme of life. He settled in 1781 at Otter shaw, in Surrey, and took to farming on philanthropic principles. His poem "The Dying Negro" (1773) struck the keynote of the anti-slavery movement.